lance spearman 61state, the same look-reads appeared under different names in and outside
South Africa.^4 In addition, the West African and East African editions
indicated “Drum Publications Nigeria Ltd.” and “Drum Publications East
Africa Ltd.” as the respective publishers, as well as local personnel as edi-
tors. The content of these magazines, however, was essentially the same
and all of it produced in South Africa. For the same reason, the editors
in Johannesburg took the utmost care to delete all references to a South
African environment, such as advertisements for South African beer and
other boycotted products in Swazi towns where the look-reads where pho-
tographed (Meisler 1969). In 1969, African Film alone had a circulation of
about 45,000 copies in East Africa, 100,000 in West Africa and 20,000 in
South Africa, where it was published as Spear magazine (Meisler 1969).
Not much has been handed down about the cast of the look-reads. The
man who acted as both Fearless Fang and The Stranger was a certain Al-
fred Holmes. Lance Spearman was portrayed by Joe Mkwanazi, who had
been working as “a houseboy, scrubbing floors in an apartment in Durban
for $35 a month and playing the piano in a night club for $1.50 a night, when
a white photographer, Stanley N. Bunn, discovered him and decided he
had the tough, sophisticated face needed for the role of Spear” (Meisler
1969: 81). For his incarnation of the African crime fighter, he earned 215
U.S. dollars a month—a very comfortable salary at the time.
LANCE SPEARMAN: AFRICA’S TOP CRIME BUSTERThough Lance Spearman is somehow attached to the police of the
fictional African state in which his adventures are set, it is never clear
whether he is actually on the state’s payroll or working as a freelancer.
In his fight against crime, he is aided by Captain Victor, a police officer
dressed in uniform; his female assistant, Sonia, who despite her elegant
dresses and handbags, knows how to fight gangsters with well-placed ka-
rate kicks; and his little helper Lemmy, a cunning boy of about twelve
years of age, whose bow tie already marks him out as Spear’s successor
(see figure 2.2). This firmly fixed set of protagonists (only Sonia disap-
pears, about three years into the series) ensured both a high-recognition
value for readers, a wide range of possible narrative arcs (Spear in peril,